Syracuse-area lawmakers who are seeking re-election played key roles in 2009 Senate coup

View full sizeProvided photo, 2009State Sen. John DeFrancisco (left), R-Syracuse, swears in Republican Sen. Dean Skelos as majority leader of the Senate and Democratic Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. as temporary Senate president on June 8, 2009, during the Republican coup in the Legislature.

Albany, NY -- It was a low point for a state Legislature known for low points: a complete shutdown of the state Senate for five weeks in the summer of 2009.

“It was a train wreck, and nobody was there to clean up the mess,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York. “I think what happened ... was a complete collapse of that institution.”

Fifteen months after the upper house of the New York State Legislature was shut down over political battles, the coup has become a distant political memory. It’s not showing up in attack ads; challengers, in fact, are barely talking about it.

The topic did come up at a debate last week between Republican Sen. John DeFrancisco, of Syracuse, who played a key role in the coup, and his Democratic challenger Kathleen Joy, but only as a question from the moderator.

Here’s a quick refresher on how the coup occurred: Democrats had gained a narrow grip on the Senate, 32-30, after more than 40 years of Republican rule. But on June 8, 2009, Republicans persuaded two Democratic senators from New York City — Pedro Espada Jr. and Hiram Monserrate — to switch sides, reversing control of the Senate. DeFrancisco swore in Espada as a leader of the Senate.

Chaos ensued. Democrats turned out the lights and left. They took the keys to the chambers. Republicans held a session and stood to say the Pledge of Allegiance; Democrats, including Dave Valesky, of Oneida, refused to stand.

Things got worse. A week after the coup, Monserrate slipped back to the Democratic fold, and a monthlong standoff ensued while the Senate was deadlocked 31-31. No business was conducted. Bills remained locked in a drawer. The deadlock became national news.

“The New York State Senate is the laughingstock of the United States,” Lynn Davis, of Liverpool, wrote then to The Post-Standard.

A Marist College poll during the standoff found that 70 percent of registered voters were angry about the stalemate.

“This is getting a little ridiculous, “ Gov. David Paterson said at the time. “They’ve got to act like adults.”

Eventually, Espada rejoined the Democrats, and he was appointed majority leader. That gave the Democrats control once more and brought the standstill to an end.

The narrow majority in the Senate — it’s still 32-30 Democrats — means this election could tilt the balance of power either way. It could also solidify that power because this Senate session will set the boundaries for districts across the state for the next 10 years.

Central New York’s senators defend their actions during the standoff, which essentially shut down the house for more than a month while the clock on the legislative session ticked away.

Local legislators played key roles. DeFrancisco supported the coup and was there to swear in his close friend, Republican Sen. Dean Skelos, as majority leader, and Espada as temporary Senate president.

North County Democrat Darrel Aubertine tried to work out a deal that would have put Republicans in charge one day, Democrats the next. The deal fell apart over who would be president pro tem, the senator who sets the rules.

DeFrancisco said recently he knew for weeks that Republicans were planning the revolt, but he was not one of the deal-makers. “I had no role in bringing it about,” he said. “I was informed, as all the Republicans were, that there were two people willing to come over to the Republican conference and vote with the Republicans.”

Both converts had ethical and legal troubles. Monserrate had been indicted months earlier after being accused of slashing his girlfriend’s face with broken glass, while Espada was reprimanded for failing to file campaign finance reports and pay resulting fines.

Monserrate was convicted and later expelled from the Senate. Tuesday, he was indicted on charges of steering $300,000 of New York City money to a nonprofit group he controlled while he was a city councilor and then diverting some of it to his Senate campaign. Espada, who was later indicted for misuse of funds, lost a primary election in September.

DeFrancisco said he supported the coup because the Democratic takeover of the Senate had meant an unfair distribution of power and funding in New York City to the detriment of Upstate Senate districts. He has said he would do it again if necessary. “The fact that it didn’t work doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth trying,” DeFrancisco said.

Tim Roske / AP, 2009State Sen. David Valesky (top left), D-Oneida, remains seated with most other Democrats as Republican senators and staff begin a session with the Pledge of Allegiance on June 23, 2009.

Valesky said he knew nothing of the coup before it happened. He called it an illegal grab for power, and he criticized Espada for his ethical problems. Valesky noted that when it was over, Espada was named to the position of majority leader, which is only a title and that the post of temporary Senate president is the one that controls the house.

“The most important thing I attempted to do was whatever I could to make sure that Sen. Espada would not become temporary president of the Senate,” Valesky said.

During the standoff, Valesky said, he worked behind the scenes trying to get the Senate moving again. “I was working to fashion some sort of compromise where a 31-31 tie could be broken,” Valesky said.

Valesky’s challenger, Andrew Russo, said Valesky did little to avert the standoff, and he should never have agreed to accept Espada. “It was a missed opportunity to show leadership,” said Russo, a Republican. “It showed us part of a disturbing pattern of saying one thing and doing another.”

Had he been in the Senate, Russo said, he would not have supported bringing Espada onto the Republican side as DeFrancisco did. Russo, who has given money to DeFrancisco’s campaign, chose his words carefully about his fellow Republican. “While I admire Sen. DeFrancisco and his efforts, I certainly would not have followed suit,” Russo said.

DeFrancisco’s Democratic opponent, Kathleen Joy, said the coup was more about DeFrancisco’s ego than it was about Central New York. “I saw it as simply a straight power play that had next to nothing do with his constituents,” Joy said. She said she would never have agreed to welcome senators such as Espada and Monserrate to her side of the aisle. “You couldn’t have picked two more unsavory characters,” she said.

Aubertine said he tried to resolve the coup by meeting with Republicans Skelos and Thomas Libous to create what he called a Center Aisle Coalition. “I told them, ‘Let’s sit down and form a coalition and put aside some of the rancor,’” Aubertine recalled. “We can get along if we work together.”

They couldn’t, and the idea went nowhere.

Sen. Michael Nozzolio, R-Fayette, did not return several phone calls for this story.

The coup reinforced what many government watchers in New York already believed about the Legislature. “I think it confirmed for most New Yorkers how dysfunctional the Legislature is,” said Lawrence Norden, senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice.

Still, there were some benefits, said Blair Horner, legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group. Before the coup, the majority party gave itself 90 percent of all member items — money that legislators can hand out in their districts — and left the scraps for the other party. After the coup, he said, that ratio is now about two-thirds for the majority and one-third for the minority.

“While that’s fairer than 90/10,” he said, “it’s still not fair.”

The coup has been getting little attention this election season, Horner said, possibly because voters have forgotten about it, or because it’s hard for either party to use it as an advantage because both sides came out looking bad.

“The challengers might have decided it’s just too hard to explain,” Horner said. “In the heat of the campaign, efforts get boiled down to a bumper sticker. You try to focus on things that are easier to convey, like property taxes.”

It remains to be seen if last summer’s stalemate will affect this fall’s elections. In a letter to The Post-Standard during the standoff, Wanda Warren Berry, of Hamilton, hoped it would. “New Yorkers need memories long enough,” Berry wrote, “to take this betrayal of democracy with them into the voting booth in 2010.”